Carrier Aggregation Technique for Improving LTE-Advanced System: Scenarios, Design, and Strategies

Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) significantly enhances the existing LTE Release 8 and supports much higher peak rates, higher throughput, and lower latencies resulting in a better user experience. Bandwidth extension in LTE-A is supported via carrier aggregation (CA) which has the capability to support wider bandwidth; and it is highly desired by network operators, because it enables the aggregation of spectrum fragments and offers a way out of the spectrum crunch. In CA, multiple basic frequency blocks called component carriers (CCs), which are designed to be backward compatible with LTE, are allocated over a broadband frequency spectrum. The aim of this book is to focus on carrier aggregation for both types of Intra band (contiguous and non-contiguous) CC’s and extending the bandwidth from the current 20 MHz up to 120 MHz, thus enhancing peak data rate up to 4 Gbps and average spectral efficiency to be 33.6 bit/s/Hz, while MIMO enhancements are being considered for both downlink and uplink.